Today I noticed on a Facebook sidebar that one of my friends was 45% active. I thought that was pretty good, considering that he's 100% dead and has been for a good while now. I hope I can remain that active that long after I step on a rainbow.

CRIME Blog | The Dallas Morning News: "The body of 36-year-old Hugo Hernandez was left on the streets of Los Mochis in seven pieces as a chilling threat to members of the Juarez drug cartel. A note read: ''Happy New Year, because this will be your last.''

To drive home the point, the assailants skinned Hernandez's face and stitched it onto a soccer ball.

The gruesome find, confirmed Friday by Sinaloa state prosecutors, represents a new level of brutality in Mexico's drug war, in which torture and beheadings are almost daily occurrences."

Galveston’s streets, notorious for potholes before the hurricane, are continuing to crack, sink and crumble in what the city said are latent effects of the hurricane. But the Federal Emergency Management Agency will not pay to repair streets just now showing damage, Eric Wilson, director of municipal utilities, said.

The street damage is a result of the hurricane’s storm surge and the abnormally heavy rainfall in Galveston in 2009, Angelo Grasso, director of public works, said."

Woman attacked her sleeping boyfriend with boiling grits: "They say that revenge is best served cold, but apparently Louisiana based Carolyn Brown hadn’t heard about it, because in a fit of anger she attacked her sleeping boyfriend with a bowl of boiling grits. And her boyfriend is now suffering from second-degree burns due to this act.

Carolyn’s boyfriend came home from work on November 7th, and then he got into a heated argument with her. In a rage, he said to her that he wanted to break up with her. After that he went to bed. Carolyn was understandably very angry and in a fit of anger she dumped a huge bowl of boiling grits on him."

Chicago man admits he sold bogus Picassos on eBay: "A suburban Chicago man pleaded guilty Tuesday to swindling at least 250 people out of more than $1 million through the sale of counterfeit prints advertised as the work of Pablo Picasso and other major contemporary artists.

Michael Zabrin of Northbrook admitted sometimes paying between $1,000 and $1,500 for counterfeit limited edition fine art prints produced in Spain and Italy and reselling them on eBay for many times that amount."

Gumby – the slender, green clay character partly modeled after Clokey’s father – was a fixture on television through the decades, starting with an appearance on the “Howdy Doody” show in 1956. Through the years, the stop motion star made several comebacks, including a new show in the 80s, after a “Saturday Night Live” skit with actor Eddie Murphy made the character popular again. Throughout Gumby’s long run, Gumby toys – most notably, the bendable – have been a staple of toy stores everywhere.

Failing Better: "In recent entries of Roger Ebert's Answer Man column—on December 9 and December 23—he tackled the rumor that Jack Benny had an uncredited cameo in Casablanca. While addressing various claims, such as the fact that one Benny fan-site stated that the Casablanca press kit verifies the fact, Ebert responded, 'I think you're right.'

I'd never heard this before, and didn't dig out my old VHS tape to check, but based on a few minutes searching online, I found a newspaper ad placed by a Florida theater that confirms this appearance—because it gave away a free pass to any theater patron who could spot Benny."

Drivers may even be able to Tweet replies as the cars will feature voice recognition technology. But composing Tweets will not be possible on the first models, due out in the US later this year, because of safety fears."

I read this book 35 years ago, and I remembered it with great fondness. I liked the movie, too. Mitchum is great in it. The cover pictured to the left is on the British edition of the book. As you can see, the author is Leonard Schrader. Paul Schrader and Robert Towne wrote the screenplay for the movie.

This is one of those novelizations that expands a lot on the movie script. It's almost 250 pages long, and the print's small. It's essentially the same story, though. Harry Kilmer (Mitchum in the movie) is a retired p.i. who's asked by an old friend to rescue the friend's daughter, who's been kidnapped by the Yakuza. Kilmer doesn't want to take the job because of things that happened in Japan during the American occupation after WWII, but the old friend convinces him. Kilmer finds the girl and rescuse her almost immediately. End of story, right? Of course not. The trouble is only beginning.

Nobody goes up against the Yakuza and wins, or so they say. They just don't know Kilmer. There's a lot of violence in both book and movie, and also a lot about friendship and honor codes. I think I was originally attracted to the book for those reasons and because of the detailed Tokyo setting.

Reading the book again, I realize that while the story and the emotions still hold up for me (and I'm sure the movie would, too), the writing doesn't. "The rosy-fingered sunset slipped into the dark glove of night." I might have admired that 35 years ago, but now, not so much. There are other stylistic quirks that at the time must have appealed to me. They don't now. But the book held my attention and zipped right along, so I can't complain. I expect that I'd now find the movie superior, however. I wonder if it's on DVD.

Dogs discover dangerous 'bone': "Madison Police spokesman Joel DeSpain said the 41-year-old man found his dogs chewing on an item that turned out to be the wooden handle of a loaded revolver. The gun was wrapped in a light green towel that was frozen solid, DeSpain said."

When NBC canceled Southland, the outcry from anguished fans reached the ears of someone at TNT, which picked up the show after only a few weeks. Next Tuesday, January 12, TNT's going to show a 2-hour "extended version" of the show's pilot episode. There'll be 13 more shows, including six brand-new ones. (The new ones begin on March 2.) Let's face it, folks. Cable's the place for a show like this, and some of the earlier episodes will have some of the previously omitted language restored. Check it out.

'I don’t believe it,' said one high school senior. 'I can't believe it.'

Yet, Danish Minhas and Nur Mohamed are jailed and due in court Thursday morning for the murder of 43-year-old Tabassum Khan. Khan was Minhas's mother.[. . . .]On the surface, they seemed like an odd match. Classmates knew Mohamed as the guy who brought drugs to school. They knew Minhas as the guy who made the morning announcements over the campus intercom.

Even the Houston police knew of Minhas. On the day his mother was killed, Minhas was supposed to report to HPD Headquarters to interview for an internship. It would have been his second interview for the spot."

Technology giants like Intel and Google are turning their attention from the desktop to the dashboard, hoping to bring the power of the PC to the car. They see vast opportunity for profit in working with automakers to create the next generation of irresistible devices."

Top Weight Loss Foods for 2010 on Yahoo! Health: "In 2010, vow to eat better—not less, just better. Add these 9 best foods for weight loss to your daily (or weekly) diet, and watch as the pounds melt away. The best-selling weight loss series Eat This, Not That! shows you how to make a weight-loss resolution worth sticking to."

Must Zzz TV - NYPOST.com: "THE first 'senior-friendly' LCD high-def set will be unveiled later this week with the kind of features only someone who went to Woodstock will love.

Manufactured by TV Ears, the set includes a built-in wireless headset which cuts down on volume-blasting; a remote control with just six buttons to lessen confusion and -- perhaps most intriguing of all -- a switch that turns the set off automatically after four hours."

The Grandiose Decay of Abandoned Detroit: "Nearly a third of Detroit's homes are vacant, and along with the residences, the city's stately hotels and cultural centers have been abandoned as well, falling into dramatic disrepair, their grand ruins still showing the promises of a once-booming city."

Man cut in fight over nachos: "A fight over nachos resulted in the arrest of two roommates at their South Side apartment late Tuesday, according to San Antonio police.

Marty Henke, 35, and Randy Scott Esckilsen, 45, were both being held Wednesday in the Bexar County Jail. Henke was arrested on an outstanding warrant for delivery of a controlled substance. His bond was set at $30,000.

Esckilsen was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon after he allegedly stabbed Henke in the chin at about 10 p.m., police said."

The measures, announced Dec. 28 by Transport Canada, permit Canadian passengers en route to the U.S. to carry on board “one or more” of 13 specified items. They include canes, cameras, laptop computers, musical instruments and “medical devices.”

However, books and magazines are not included among the permitted items. The situation has left Carolyn Wood, executive director of the Association of Canadian Publishers, “speechless, really. We're used to governments fearing books for their content. But what is it here? Is it their explosive capability?”"

SCIENCE NEWS - washingtonpost.com: "A 20-foot-long crocodile with three sets of fangs -- like wild boar tusks -- once roamed parts of northern Africa, researchers reported recently. While this fearsome creature hunted meat, not far away another type of croc with a wide, flat snout like a pancake was fishing for food. And a smaller, three-foot-long relative with buckteeth was chomping plants and grubs in the same region.

The three species that lived 100 million years ago on the southern continent known as Gondwana were recently unveiled by researchers Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago and Hans Larsson of McGill University in Montreal.

'My African crocs appeared to have had both upright, agile legs for bounding overland and a versatile tail for paddling in water,' Sereno wrote in an article for National Geographic magazine, which sponsored the research."

Transatlantic accent � Abagond: "The Transatlantic accent, also called a Mid-Atlantic accent, is a way of speaking English that is halfway between American and British. It makes you sound like you have a good education but no one can tell quite where you are from. You hear it in old Hollywood films from the 1930s and 1940s. It is the accent of Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn, William F Buckley and (at least in some films) God."

Mitchell had been having health problems and went into cardiac arrest in December, according to his grandson, Lawrence.

Mitchell 'was doing music all the way till he couldn't,' his grandson, whom Mitchell helped raise, said. He worked on Rod Stewart's most recent album, 'Soulbook,' as well as Solomon Burke's forthcoming CD."

Book Magazine Kirkus Reviews Lives to Write Another Day - DailyFinance: "Late last year, Nielsen Business Media announced it would shut down two venerable trade magazines: newspaper industry-centric Editor & Publisher and book industry publication Kirkus Reviews. Just a few days into 2010, the news for both magazines is much more positive. The staffers of E&P have launched an exile blog while awaiting a possible sale, and Kirkus Reviews will continue publication for the foreseeable future."

Pub noise has condo neighbors fuming in Houston | Houston & Texas News | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle: "A long-standing feud between Rice-area bar owners and their neighbors in a high-rise condo has escalated from egg throwing, water spraying, laser pointing and name calling to assault lawsuits.[. . . .]Bar co-owner Bill Cave was charged with misdemeanor assault for his behavior in trying to stop water spraying on his Christmas party. A few days later the condo association and homeowners became subject to a restraining order keeping them from tossing produce, water or anything off their garage onto the bar patrons and bocce ball court below."

Temperatures this week are forecast to plummet as low as -13°C in the Scottish Highlands, with the mercury falling to -6C° in London, -5°C in Birmingham and -7°C in Manchester as one of the coldest winters in years continues to bite."

Carole and Dick Kleis live together on their eastern Iowa farm. This year for her birthday, Dick used more than 120,000 pounds of manure to spell out a special message. It basically says 'Happy Birthday, Love You,' but in shorthand."

Or does anyone else hate those sites where there are Bing links everywhere that pop up if you get your mouse anywhere near them or even look at the page too hard? It's beyond annoying. In fact, it induces Bing rage in me.

20 years on, captive crocodile Gori waits for a mate: "The 15th National Youth Festival scheduled to begin here on January 8 has once again brought to the fore the story of Gori, the country’s lone captive albino crocodile which is still waiting for an ideal mate for nearly two and half decades at a government-run crocodile breeding and research centre located inside the world famous Bhitarakanika wildlife sanctuary in Orissa’s coastal Kendrapara district."

Dark Roasted Blend: 10 Possible Sources of "Avatar" in Classic Science Fiction: "Instead, we are going to list some possible influences from obscure and even forgotten classic science fiction sources that came to our mind while watching 'Avatar' - there is no telling if James Cameron read any of them or was influenced by any particular tradition, but it was a good fun to find out and remember the jolly good reads that they are (see if you can remember any of the stories mentioned below, or if you can think of other ones)."

But in his rollicking new book 'Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America' (Simon & Schuster), biographer Peter Biskind hazards a guess about the conquests of Hollywood's most notorious lothario -- based, he says, on 'simple arithmetic.'

Biskind estimates '12,775 women, give or take, a figure that does not include daytime quickies, drive-bys, casual gropings, stolen kisses and so on.'"

J. R. R. Tolkien - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE (pronounced /ˈtɒlkiːn/[1]; in General American also /ˈtoʊlkiːn/[2]) (3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion."

This was the first book I read in 2010, and it's going to be hard to top. Bob Greene, who's written a couple of books I've enjoyed, especially Be True to Your School, got a letter in 1992 from Gary Griffin, who was part of the group touring with Jan and Dean, mentioned in the book. Greene was a fan of the duo, and Griffin made him the dream offer of a lifetime. He invited Greene to tour with the group, not just as an observer but as a participant in the stage show.

If you grew up when I did, you'd respond just like Greene. He wasn't a singer or a guitar player, but he jumped at the chance. Every summer for 15 years, he was a part of Jan and Dean's back-up group when he could make the gigs. When We Get to Surf City is his account of those gigs. It's not a glamorous life, but Greene found it wonderful. You'll just have to read the book to find out why because I can't explain it. In a sense it's as simple as this: Guys never want to grow up, and Greene got to live his teenage dream when he was middle-aged. But there's a lot more to it than that. Every page or so, Greene comes up with an observation that really resonated with me. Here's one of them:

Who could have known it at the time - who could have known how long this would endure? On the loneliest nights, on the most joyful afternoons, during the sultriest summers and frigid winters, the music, since it was new, has been so profoundly and consistently welcome. In the very worst of times, and in the very best, this music - structurally uncomplicated, four chords in most of the songs, lyrics usually basic and bare - has been like a friend, something to be counted on and treasured. Magic: just guitars and drums and vocals, yet it has always been, without my even having to think about it, the most loyal and steadfast of companions. Wherever I have been, I have needed only to hear three or four seconds of any of hundreds of these songs, coming out of a radio or a loudspeaker or merely out an window on a city street, and I'm instantly somewhere I've been before, somewhere I want to be, familiar and somehow safe.

If that doesn't mean anything to you, you wouldn't like the book. If it strikes you as exactly right, then you should read the book ASAP.